


Many Shades of Black

by BlindtoDreams



Category: Glee, SuperGlee
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-03
Updated: 2012-09-16
Packaged: 2017-11-04 18:47:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/397044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlindtoDreams/pseuds/BlindtoDreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt Hummel doesn’t believe in the supernatural. He knows better than to think of boogeymen before bed or check his closet for malevolent things. He also knows that what’s been following him around Lima for the past few weeks isn’t Blaine, not anymore.</p><p>And although Blaine puts on a proper show of confusion and heartbreak in front of their friends, whenever they’re alone, he lets Kurt know that he’s right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Faint Supernatural crossover featuring my personal favorite, demon!Blaine.

Kurt was alone a moment ago, walking at a stiff, hurried pace between classrooms, but in the space of a blink he’s been partnered by another pair of footsteps. He knows without looking that it’s Blaine - it's Blaine, but it isn’t, like something is wearing a skin of him, an ill-fitted suit, a clash of colors.  
  
“Where are you going in such a hurry?,” he asks, almost in Blaine’s voice. Almost.

Kurt doesn’t look at him. He takes every precaution he can, these days, to keep from looking at him. He isn’t any closer to knowing how to handle this; he still doesn’t know what happened. What he knows is that face has been in his hands before, it’s been pressed up against him, it’s left kisses, wet and hungry, reverent and slow, down the line of his stomach. To look at it now and feel nothing but hatred, to be afraid with no understanding of why, it’s too much to bear.

At night he wonders if he’s going insane, if he should tell Burt, tell Carole, tell _Emma_ what he’s been thinking. Then Blaine’s number will light up the LED panel on his cell phone, and he’ll have to bury his face under a pillow to block out what he knows will be an endless string of baiting, manipulative text messages and let himself be smothered into sleep.

Blaine texts him every night.

Kurt never answers.  
  
“Get away from me,” he says, rounding the corner.  
  
Blaine is cheerfully defiant, falling in step beside him just like he used to, hands in his pockets, smile on his face.  
  
“That’s no way to talk to your boyfriend. C'mon, wait up.”  
  
His mannerisms are so precise. If Kurt were projecting Blaine from memory, he would include each of these things; the dip of his voice into a rumble as he ends a sentence, the way his head falls to one side as he speaks, the way he hides his hands when he wants something.  
  
This happens every day.  
  
It’s why Kurt has to avoid him, whoever he is, because the realism, the exactness, overwhelms him with self-doubt. The second he sees that sweet, familiar face and hears the imitation of his phrases, it’s too easy to surrender to the memory.

But this Blaine also carries an obvious aggression, both cloaked and blatant all at once. He moves like a predator when his guard is down, and his eyes are always full of perverse calculations. There’s a smell on him, too, a smell that Kurt can’t name, something cold and metallic and (he’ll never admit it) _inhuman._ He never smells of sweat, anymore, or cologne, he doesn’t even smell like skin.

The gross, unyielding conflict between denial and instinct is pressed into him daily. _He’s Blaine, but he isn’t._

Kurt’s survival and sanity have depended entirely on being able to avoid him for the past month.

Glee Club is already history, in spite of the persuasions of his friends, and he took to riding home with Finn after finding Blaine in his car's passenger seat one afternoon, asking salaciously, hungrily for a “ride.”

He’s done the best he can to protect himself from the _thing_ that Blaine is becoming.

It’s only during lunch, or those vulnerable minutes between classes, that Kurt can’t control his surroundings. Now that Blaine is catching on, even the hallways aren’t safe.  
  
Kurt pointedly ignores the syrupy manipulation and jogs ahead, aiming his feet for the stairs.

It isn’t that easy, these days. He can only fantasize that it will be.

Blaine catches him by the elbow and tugs him back down. Kurt could swear he’d felt only a few of Blaine’s fingers through the fabric of his shirt, but somehow, _somehow_   that’s all it takes for him to be displaced, pulled backward and set firmly against the stairway wall.  
  
Even without being threatened directly, Kurt knows to be on the defense. His body is tight, tight all over, holding onto nothing but holding _so_ _hard._  
  
Blaine’s face melts into a cruel pout, barely acted. He looks positively _wounded _by the rejection.__ The way he talks, though, that can’t be mistaken. Every word betrays him. Whoever this is, he only knows how to speak in mockery.  
  
“I don’t understand why you’re avoiding me like this. Tell me what I did.”  
  
Kurt can’t find his footing, can’t breathe. Not with this thing in front of him, touching him, keeping him still. He’s ready to fight or flee, or both, come what may, and his answer reflects panic, hissing hot.  
  
“I see right through you. Do you understand me? I see through you, this isn't working!”  
  
Blaine fakes ignorance. He reacts as though they’re talking about the relationship, a lover’s quarrel.  
  
“We can make it work.”  
  
His fingers leave a line down the side of Kurt’s face. Kurt starts, slaps him away by the wrist.  
  
“Don’t touch me. Don’t _touch_ me. You’re not him. I _know_ you’re not him.”

Hurt crosses the face of the thing that isn’t Blaine. "Baby . . . please, please stop saying things like that." He leans in close, pretending pain, pretending concern. "I don’t know how much more of this I can take, Kurt. These little outbursts, the way you shrug me off. I’m trying so hard, but. You don't sound like yourself anymore.”  
  
Whatever is hiding in Blaine, it has all the patience of a dusty, ancient planet drifting through space. It trusts its own game. It isn’t in any hurry to let Kurt see behind the curtain. More importantly, it is a talented actor. The minute Kurt is forced by their nearness to look the man he loved in the eye and hear him say that _he, Kurt, _is_ _ the one who changed, it becomes a dire possibility. Again.  
  
Blaine watches the horrified creep of Kurt’s expression toward believing him and seizes that opportunity. He rests a hand above Kurt’s hipbone, brushing its thumb along a small flash of exposed skin.  
  
“You know I’m right, don’t you? You can _trust_ me, I just want to help you. Something’s wrong with you, Kurt. Tell me what it is.”  
  
From its dock at Kurt’s hip, Blaine’s hand is in motion, traveling along that lean, intimate distance. It runs over belly, over ribcage, over breastbone and collar, curling at its end to rest behind Kurt’s neck.  
  
“Let me help you,” Blaine says, and he has to hide his smile - has to _bite it off of his own fucking mouth_ to keep it concealed - when he sees a tear tumble over Kurt’s eyelid and glance off his cheek before falling.

Blaine can’t help himself. He has to drive the nail in a little further before giving him relief.

“I’m going to help you, because I love you. _I love you_ , Kurt. Remember?”

It takes almost no effort to con him. Kurt wants so badly to believe, even if it means that he’s insane underneath, even if it means he's been imagining these things that’ve kept him conflicted and afraid. Hallucinations, maybe, brought on by stress? Or a one-way ticket to a padded room for the foreseeable future? He’ll convince himself of anything if it means his dutiful, dog-eyed little plaything is still in there somewhere. The demon has delighted in that knowledge for days. He’s made a very specific sport of drawing Kurt toward the idea that he’s crazy, then thrusting him back into isolation with a glimpse of the truth.  
  
Before long, Kurt won’t be able to stand it anymore, and his sanity will crumble. That’s when the game is won.  
  
Through breath after ragged breath, the kind that always comes before the demon’s favorite sound (frustrated, helpless sobs), Kurt shakes his head. It must be such a foreign place to be, these days, alien and unwelcoming.

“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” he confesses, whining. It’s such a small, desperate voice he uses that the demon’s dirty heart can’t help but skip a beat in its excitement.  
  
He moves in, playing at compassion to cover Kurt’s body in a possessive embrace. He smoothes a tousled bit of hair with his free hand, stroking, settling, hypnotizing.  
  
“Everything’s going to be fine. It’s going to be fine, I promise. Do you still love me? Just tell me you still love me.”  
  
Kurt hesitates with a choke on the words, and Blaine says it again, this time colder, harder, a command.  
  
“Tell me you _love_   me, Kurt.”  
  
The touch at the back of his neck was a gentle thing at first, a brushed assertion of closeness, but it changes when he gives the order. Blaine crushes the fragile skin between his fingers, digs them in and pinches, raising patches of sore, red ache.

He levels his mouth with Kurt’s ear, one soft bit of pink ghosting across another, and whispers, _“If you tell me you love me, I’ll tell you where I’m keeping him.”_  
  
The promise catches Kurt’s attention like the sound of shattered glass. His head pulls back, aggressive in its focus, just in time to see the slide of Blaine’s eyes from warm, affectionate brown to slick, inky black, bleeding through the irises until they’re filled up with the color.  
  
A furious burst of movement separates them; Kurt shoves out his hands and dances away from the wall, a puncture of pent-up adrenaline, until his feet are on the stairs and Blaine is below him, relieving him with his distance.

The black is blinked away when next their eyes meet, but Kurt isn’t confused, this time. He knows he saw it. _He saw it._   After a terrified moment spent staring at the memory, wearing Blaine’s face and smiling as if they’ve just reconciled, Kurt turns on his heel and runs.

It isn’t until he’s up two flights of stairs and safely surrounded by a crowd of other students in trigonometry, who only appear annoyed at the shoulder-shoving speed of his entrance, that Kurt can process what the creature told him.

_Where I’m keeping him._

It settles on him second by second that Blaine isn’t dead. It's not a relief for long.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little backstory to catch us up! <3

It started out as headaches - sharp sparks of hurt the likes of which Blaine had never felt before. They receded in seconds, but seemed to take something with them every time. They were teeth biting into his brain and holding onto what they chewed, swallowing him down chunk by chunk. He felt different whenever one struck him, a little more hollow when it passed.  
  
The first came on in the kitchen. Barefoot and barely awake about an hour before his alarm was supposed to go off, he was having a drink of water and trying to remember what woke him. What noise, what stimulus was strong enough to stop him sleeping, then vanish entirely when he came to and tried to find it?  
  
In the next instant, he was doubled over the sink and howling with pain. It felt like he’d been blinded. He threw the glass away from himself - a point that bothered and unnerved him every time he thought of it. He didn’t drop the glass, he _threw_ it, cracked it open against the wall in an explosion of sound and wet, glittering shards. It felt significant. He couldn’t think of a time he’d hurt so bad that it spurred him to violence.  
  
The second hit while he was driving. He had just enough self-control to pull off the road (though not without sacrificing his bumper) before the sunlight compounded the bright, seering ache in his head and made him scream. It passed in less than a minute, but the thin leather barrier between his hands and the steering wheel was punctured everywhere a nail could reach, shredded beneath his fingers.  
  
He sucked air audibly afterwards, trying to manage the swift approach of panic. The headaches alone were cause for concern, but they brought with them an inability to command his own actions. He was ashamed of that helpless compulsiveness. He couldn’t rationalize the idea that he couldn’t control himself simply because he was in pain, and it made him feel stupid, somehow; incapable of some vital function of intelligence.  
  
So he told no one, resigned to self-diagnosis through the occasional WebMD search and various forum discussions where he searched for similarities in the struggles of other people.  
  
Unsurprisingly, there was no comfort to be found on the internet, and the secret was impossible to keep.  
  
The attacks eventually followed him to school, each one eating up more of his day. Ten seconds became twenty, became thirty. It was only a matter of time before the violence of his affliction caught up to him in front of someone who would care.  
  
When they came on slowly, he could sit down in time to avoid a fall, but the brighter the light around him, the less capable he was of sensing their growth. It often meant coming to on his back, carpet clawed up under his hands.   
  
Two weeks after the headaches started, the fluorescent bulbs of the locker room turned into hooks that latched into his brain, and when he went down, Puck was near enough to catch him under the arms.  
  
He lowered him onto a bench and dropped low to look him over, though this was largely a gesture of courtesy - the only emergency Puck could identify and treat was dehydration.  
  
“What the hell was that?”  
  
“I don’t know.” It was honest,  but much too vulnerable. Blaine covered it quickly with, “Little headache. Think it went away already.”  
  
“Was it one of those light switch things?”  
  
“ _What_?” Although he avoided aggression with his hands, this time, even he could tell the question was much too sharp. It was full of judgment and scorn, as though the pressure to lash out had been diverted from physical to verbal.  
  
Puck didn’t answer. He was either too used to Blaine’s passivity and optimism to know what to say, or else he was biting his tongue to avoid a fight. Still, tension gathered between them, sparked and snapped in the dull, active silence.

Blaine relented first; it was his fault, after all.  
  
“Oh. You mean a seizure. No, it wasn’t a seizure. It’s just a headache, I’m good. Everything’s good.”  
  
“You’re sure?”  
  
“I’m sure.”  
  
Puck slapped his shoulder and lingered for another minute making small talk, trying to navigate out of the awkwardness before he left. Blaine hardly had the energy to help him repair the still-forming friendship. He could only hope his attitude did no permanent damage.  
  
In the days that followed, exercise of any kind became a certain trigger for Blaine. Exerting his body acted as an invitation to pain. Puck caught him once more before he decided to skip gym altogether - little adjustments to avoid greater complications.  
  
The greatest complication was one he couldn’t avoid. Kurt had never been singular in his relation to Blaine; never just a boyfriend, never just a friend, never just a schoolmate. He was part of a larger routine. Day to day didn’t happen without Kurt. They met up on the steps each morning for a kiss, they ate lunch together with Kurt’s friends, they went to Glee Club hand-in-hand and, often enough, went home to each other’s houses.  
  
Blaine couldn’t begin to construct an explanation for shrugging him off. Instead, he minimized his input to conversations, made excuses in the smallest quantity possible to go home alone, and if he was lucky enough to predict an episode, he hid in bathrooms or empty bedrooms until it was safe.  
  
The harsh shine of mall lighting dismantled the charade.

It was a group outing - enough people present that he could be buffered from how little he wanted to talk - and for almost an hour, a sense of peace returned to Blaine. He was surrounded by friends who were happily chattering, and Kurt was near enough to touch, yet needed nothing from him.

Then he was on his knees and unable to bite away a storm of shouting. Strangers stopped in their tracks, friends huddled close to him, and Kurt sat down beside him, energized with worry.

Even taking a knee next to him was too much for Blaine. Claustrophobia, or something very like it, wrapped its coils around him and he wanted - actually _wanted_ \- to shove Kurt away.  
  
“What is it?” Kurt’s hand tried to rub comfort over his shoulders.  
  
“It’s nothing, it’s just a headache.”  
  
Puck interjected, “Bullshit, dude, this is like the third time it’s happened this week.”  
  
Blaine could’ve hit him. Kurt’s attention was briefly diverted to Puck, but it came all too quickly around again. The unblinking focus of his analytic glare was humiliating, infantilizing.  
  
“What’s going on with you? Talk to me.”  
  
“Nothing’s ‘going on with me,’ I just have a headache. I’m pretty sure everybody gets them.”  
  
“Not like this, and not 3 times in a row without saying something.”  
  
“Are you _listening_ to me? There is nothing wrong with me, I’m _fine_.”  
  
Regret followed the words out of his mouth. He made the same mistake with Kurt that he’d made with Puck days before - there was too much hostility in his voice; he might as well have called him an idiot. Kurt looked offended, almost combative, and their friends rocked between expressions of protectiveness and concern.  
  
“I’m sorry.” It was a genuine apology, carrying all the care for Kurt’s opinion of him that he normally acted with, but Kurt didn’t appear to be moved. He nodded his head, chin jutting forward, and said nothing.  
  
“I’m really okay,” Blaine tried again. “I think I just need to go home.”  
  
“Fine. I’ll call you tomorrow.” Kurt didn’t add, _‘hope you can find your own way home,’_ but Blaine heard it just the same.  
  
It hurt worse than anything about his body’s mutinous behavior to watch Kurt dismiss him that way, but he didn’t have the the presence of mind to fight back into his good graces. Not now. His priorities had been effectively rearranged.  
  
Because there was nothing left do but think, Blaine collected the details of that day to himself over and over, uselessly struggling for answers. He thought of Kurt’s expression, his pinpoint features and his hard, bright eyes. That moment of bitter disappointment was the last time he saw Kurt as himself, rather than through the eyes of the dark, determined thing that drove him, now.  
  
At home that evening, he wanted nothing more than to sleep. He swallowed a handful of Advil, drank glass after glass of water - everything internal felt dry, like he was flaking apart and crumbling from the inside out; he couldn’t get enough water - then tried to drag his way through the house to bed.  
  
He didn’t make it past the second story landing before another attack dug into him - the fourth of the day, or fifth. They were quickening in frequency and he couldn’t keep track.  
  
He could feel it building up in him, a fist about to strike, a ripping of sensation through his nerves. He had to sit down on the stair to avoid falling. Ten seconds.

Pain burned over his head, shone in his eyes, clogged his ears and throat. Twenty seconds. He tried to steady his breathing but it turned too quickly against him, set him hyperventilating.

Thirty. Forty. Fifty seconds. He filtered all ten fingers through his hair and swore quietly, then lost count, then lost everything.  
  
The pain didn’t leave him; he left himself. Or didn’t, or wanted to, or tried. The disassociation was dire, he felt either spat out or locked in, and without knowing which, he couldn’t determine how to fight back his struggle was desperate but aimless.  
  
Then he felt - or _saw_ \- his body moving. He looked out of his eyes but couldn’t direct them, and he watched from a position of utter impotence as the stairway slipped behind him. He watched walls turn into corners turn into rooms, commanded by something that was not him, something he couldn’t access.  
  
He ordered his arms to lift in front of him, ordered his legs to turn around, tried to focus directly on impulses that had always been instinctive in the past, but none of it worked, and he couldn’t fight through the haze of pain to try a second time. Instead he watched, terrified and trapped, as a thing that was not him crossed the house and searched its rooms.  
  
At the end of the third story hall, his second self approached the office where his father spent most of his evenings. He’d be in there working; Blaine could hear the keys of his computer.  
  
He tried to burrow deeper, tried to gather strength and reinforce his resolve, and as he neared the door through a captive vessel, Blaine yelled for help with everything in him.  Though his mouth didn’t move, whatever was holding onto him heard the attempt, and dropped away as if startled.  
  
His body crumpled to the carpet. He groped for air, mouth wide and greedily sucking. No amount of oxygen could flush the memory away. His numb, dumb tongue called out again, crying for his father in a way he hadn’t done since he was a child. Aaron was beside him in an instant; he’d heard him this time, no cloudy, impossible forces gummed up his tongue to prevent him from speaking.  
  
His father’s arms were around him, lifting him, holding him close, and for just a minute he wanted to pretend he was alright. Giving in to the comfort meant having to admit — what? That he was going insane? What ridiculous, unfair force was behind his sudden and utter lack of ability to hold his own body together?  
  
Cradling the limp weight of his son against him, Aaron asked against the line of his hair, “What’s the matter? What is it?”  
  
Blaine didn’t know what to say, so he opted for the awful truth. He wasn’t stable anymore.  
  
“My head, something’s wrong with me, it hurts.”  It sounded just as childish and laughable as it felt, and he couldn’t get over how small he was, how powerless. “I think I need to see somebody.”  
  
“Come on,” Aaron said, assuming the worst, that this meant insurance forms and hospital coffee and waiting with a knot in his stomach for news.  
  
Blaine shook his head and tightened the weak grasp of his fingers on his father’s clothes. “Not like that, I mean - I think I need help, I think - I think I need to talk to somebody.”  
  
For a moment, Aaron was perplexed - what did Blaine think he was trying to make him stand up for? Clarity slid over him like a stone; Blaine meant a psychologist or counselor, and that was another kind of knot altogether.  
  
They said nothing else after Aaron agreed with a quiet, “Alright. Tomorrow,” but they stayed where they were a long time, holding onto each other. Blaine cried without a sound, staring out from over his father’s protective arm.  
  
That appointment was never made. He went to bed exhausted and weak and scared, and it must’ve been all his second self was waiting on to take over altogether. He was woken up by force, by his eyes opening without him, by his body moving as if at warp speed while he struggled slug-like to keep up. He was boxed in and bound, held still, suspended in the brilliance of neverending pain.  
  
They - he and his second self, his engine - moved together through the house, just like the night before. It was a constant struggle of one holding the other still, one fighting the other off. Blaine lost every round.  
  
He was carried inside himself to the bathroom, examined by his own eyes in the mirror there. His fingers touched his face, exploring its curves and getting familiar.  
  
He could see himself reflected back and know it wasn’t him. And he hurt too much to think, to figure out how, _how_ he was looking at a self that was not him.  
  
“Morning,” his reflection said, and Blaine knew it was talking to him, sending a message inward. “You ready? We’re going to have a lot of fun together.” _  
_


	3. Chapter 3

Finn is twenty minutes late getting out of bed.   
  
Relying on him for transportation is inconvenient at a minimum, but mornings like this, where he sleeps straight through his alarm and throws pillows at the door when people knock to wake him, they’re worse than anything about the carpool arrangement.   
  
The dirty, smelly seats, the loud generic rock music and the inane chatter when Kurt’s only half-awake are nothing compared to the anxiety he feels when Finn wakes up late. He can’t stand living on someone else’s clock.   
  
For the fourth time that morning, he shouts up the stairs for Finn, and because each one’s gotten progressively louder and more furious without success, he adds colorfully, ‘ _get the fuck up_!’   
  
A dour, gravel-rough “Hey,” curls from Burt, who stops mid-pour at the coffee pot. “Watch your mouth.”

“Do you see what time it is? What the hell is he doing up there?”   
  
“I don’t know, but it’s no reason for you to be vulgar.”   
  
Kurt licks a response off his lips, one that would earn him a lot more than a “ _hey_.” His ride is a rock that won’t wake up and his father is policing his behavior. It’s an ugly start to the day.

When Carole shuffles her way to the kitchen, he’s grateful - briefly - for the distraction she provides.   
  
“Is he awake?”   
  
Carole almost looks embarrassed. She confesses with sympathy, “I don’t think so.”   
  
“Jesus!”   
  
“Honey, can’t you just take your own car today? It’s been sitting out there for weeks, and I don’t think you’re going to make your first class if you keep waiting for Finn.”   
  
The question is effective at minimizing Kurt’s aggression. He’s instantly flustered, trying to reach back into memory for the excuse he gave when he shelved his keys to avoid the thing at school, the thing that isn’t Blaine.   
  
“We talked about this,” he insists, willing composure to stay with him. “We’re saving gas money by going together. We can pay both cars off faster that way.”   
  
“And we appreciate the gesture,” Burt offers after a mouthful of coffee, “but I think Carole and I can handle the family’s finances on our own. Especially if it means that at least one of you gets to school on time.”   
  
He wants nothing more than to tell them why he doesn’t drive alone. He’s tired, he’s scared; every day feels a little less safe and he’s stuck in a kind of mourning he can’t understand. He hasn’t dealt with many things that Burt didn’t eventually become involved in. Kurt counts on him, on being able to confide in him, he counts on his advice.   
  
It’s a comforting fantasy; he allows himself to indulge for a moment. In an ideal world, he’d be gathered up between Burt and Carole, they would believe every word out of his mouth, and they would promise to protect him - just like they had when his problem was Dave. They would do what parents are supposed to do, they would lead him out of harm’s way. A comforting, comforting fantasy.   
  
A fantasy and nothing more. He snaps abruptly, “Fine. I’ll drive my car. And when we’re bankrupt and shuffling down the street in our bathrobes, I’ll thank my lucky stars that at least I got to school on time before we lost the house.”  
  
He leaves before they can answer, snatching his keys from the hook where they’ve been for a month and slamming the door behind him.   
  
Behind his retreat, Carole offers Burt a pitying smile, as if to say, ‘ _teenagers_.’ But he’s chuckling into his mug and shaking his head, unaffected, too tired to be angry. Kurt can be such a pain in the ass - every now and again, it’s endearing.   
  
————-  
  
The school day is quiet. Without Glee Club, they’re all a little quiet. His friends have stopped prompting him to rejoin in the classes they have together, and as long as he avoids bathroom breaks or being the first to leave the lunch room, Blaine never finds him alone long enough to corner him.   
  
He only sees him twice - once in the cafeteria, talking with someone Kurt doesn’t know but sparing a second to send him a wink, and once more as he’s walking into the choir room. Kurt can only imagine what he says to them about their relationship when he’s in there. Nobody’s asked him about his change of heart, but that in itself is indicative of trouble.   
  
And because it’s a quiet day at school, and because he only has to see him twice, Kurt isn’t surprised to see him in the parking lot after peering around corners and trying to sneak his way to safety when it’s time to go home. It was almost a given. He shouldn’t have wasted his energy - his luck just isn’t that good.  
  
He’s leaned against the driver side door of Kurt’s car, hands pocketed. He looks so much like Blaine, Kurt’s stomach turns - it’s beyond understanding, it isn’t possible. He just looks _so much like him_.   
  
As Kurt approaches, Blaine’s face, his mouth, his voice all ask him, “No bodyguard today?”   
  
“Move.”   
  
“Come move me,” he challenges back with a bright, perverse smile.  
  
Kurt hesitates, scanning the lot for the nearest students.   
  
“Come on,” Blaine goads him. “Let’s ride home together. Like old times. We ought to have a talk.”   
  
“You think I’m stupid, is that it? That I’m like every other rube you’ve managed to dupe at this school? I’m not going anywhere with you. Stay if you want, I’ll go back inside and tell someone you’re harassing me.”  
  
“I don’t think you’re stupid, Kurt. I think you’re selfish.”   
  
Kurt doesn’t answer, but something in the statement grounds him to the spot. He can’t leave until he hears the punchline.   
  
“You’ll let me keep your little lost dog locked up with me forever if it means you’re safe. You’re no better than I am.”   
  
Kurt’s eyes and heart and stomach all sting with guilt, because it could so easily be the truth - he hasn’t wanted to think about it. He’s tried _so hard_ not to think about it. He doesn’t want to believe the thing wearing Blaine’s expressions like a living, breathing mask meant anything by promising to tell him where he is.

He’s decided that Blaine is already gone; what other explanation is there?   
  
Forced to reevaluate in the face of what looked so, so much like him, a flush of self-loathing gnaws at Kurt. If he’s wrong, then wherever Blaine is and whatever is happening to him, he’s allowing it to happen.   
  
Blinking rapidly to flush away the threat of tears, Kurt finds his footing again in reason - he can’t explain it, he doesn’t know how the knowledge can be so certain in him, but it is. This is only another game. He’s being toyed with, just like he was by the stairs.   
  
“You don’t have him - you can’t. It’s not possible.”   
  
“Does that make you feel less responsible for what he’s going through? I tell him stories - should I add this to the rotation?”   
  
“I’m going inside.”  
  
“Selfish, selfish, selfish little bitch.” It’s said with a grin, a grin Kurt doesn’t want to see. It evokes the same memories it destroys. He turns to find an ally.  
  
Like last time, like every time this incarnation of Blaine wants to move him, it seems to require no effort when fingers reach forward for his shoulder and jerk him back - he’s been pulled, pawed and spun around, thrust back-first against the side of his car before he can grunt in reply to the force.   
  
Once he’s got Kurt snug between himself and the impassive brace of metal, Blaine’s face goes soft, expression loose and affectionate. People will still be wandering to their cars, and he doesn’t want attention. As far as anyone else should be concerned, they’re a couple, doing what couples do, being intimate. Sharing stories.   
  
Blaine sends a touch to the jut of Kurt’s hip, pushes back, palms at the skin through clothing.  
  
“Some days,” he tells Kurt, a whisper that carries the dampness of his breath, “I don’t think it’s possible for him to scream anymore. Then I talk about you.”   
  
Kurt avoids his face, refuses to look at him, stares at the school’s entrance where another body is sure to emerge soon. But his mouth, as always, betrays him. “Shut _up_ , stop it.”   
  
Blaine’s fingers spread out and flatten against Kurt’s back, pressing them together, hip against hip, belly against belly. “He still thinks someone’s coming to save him. Should I tell him everyone’s moved on? Even you?”   
  
Kurt’s stone-still but everything inside is chaos. Reason and logic slip from him, pushed out by Blaine’s nearness and the inhuman scent that comes off of his skin - an irrefutable clue that this is another person entirely. That maybe, maybe, he isn’t lying.   
  
The demon rests his cheek against Kurt’s, quiets the predatory confidence in his voice and whines pitifully, whines like Blaine would, “Have you given up on me, Kurt?”   
  
Kurt can’t stop himself from answering, a shrill croak, a sad, vulnerable attempt at reassuring someone who isn’t there, “No. _No_.”   
  
“Then get in the car.”

The minute Kurt accepts the possibility that Blaine is still alive, it’s decided that he’s going to help him. No one else can, no one else knows that they should - he’ll do it, he’ll find a way. But he won’t do it like this. Disappearing with a cleverly disguised monster won’t do anything for Blaine but give him company wherever he is.   
  
His silent refusal prompts another threat, and the fingertips against his spine seem to burn. “I won’t keep asking nicely, Kurt.”   
  
Kurt does all he can think of to shake the creature off - strikes at his shins with the sharp points of his boots and screams for help. He’s released instantly, Blaine’s foreign figure moving several feet away from him in the aftermath of a cry that has one faraway head already peeking up from an open trunk to determine where the trouble is.   
  
“Think you’re being clever?”   
  
Eyes focused and unblinking, Kurt unlocks his door and climbs inside, wound tight, prepared to scream again if Blaine tries to get closer. “I’m leaving without you, aren’t I?”   
  
“You asked for this. I want you to remember that you asked for this.”   
  
Kurt rejects the threat - it doesn’t matter. Getting away from him matters, however many times he has to do it. The present danger is always the most important.   
  
Blaine lets him drive away and doesn’t follow. He doesn’t even look upset, shrinking in the rearview mirror.

It’s true that he can’t talk to Kurt here, can’t get what he needs from him in the school’s perimeter. And he’s so rarely alone anywhere else. It’s slowing the demon down, no question about it. But he isn’t upset. He isn’t angry. He’ll find a way to motivate Kurt’s compliance.

He already knows where to start.


	4. Chapter 4

Blaine didn’t know if he ever slept.  
  
Unless there was another person near enough to ground him, being pinned up in a corner of himself made it impossible to tell whether he was awake or dreaming, alive or dead. He understood only two things: the blistering interior of the headaches that first hinted at his affliction, and trying to communicate with anyone the demon came in contact with - _get me out, get me out, get me out._  
  
He tried to answer his reflection that morning with a mouth he could no longer feel.  
  
“Sh,” the reflected face told him, effectively stifling the effort. “We’ve heard enough out of you.” Then it left the bathroom, dragging Blaine along, and crept through the Anderson home.  
  
Although it was secondary to the violation of having his body moved through, Blaine still felt a bitter protectiveness toward his house in seeing it observed by an imposter. His father’s art, their antique furniture, the hallways of his childhood - it was laid out as ever, tidy and coordinating, but entirely unguarded against the parasitic invasion of a lookalike. He fretted for its weakness, its vulnerability to outsiders. He wanted to hide it from the thing that propelled him, didn’t want to let it see.  
  
The shared space of consciousness between them was making decisions Blaine couldn’t decipher as they explored. It thought to itself in an inhuman language. But he could feel its predatory slant, the threatening objectives. It spoke in tongues of filth and ruin.  
  
Room by room, they made their way to the kitchen together. His second self opened drawers and cupboards, searching, debating with itself about the objects it looked at. He was curious and full of intent, and patient enough to take his time.  
  
A hammer, a sharpening rod, a sturdy iron skillet - things the demon touched, lifted, examined and put back.  
  
“What do you have for me,” he asked the empty room.  
  
The hunt stopped in front of the refrigerator long enough for study of its decorated door. This was the only place Aaron allowed clutter. He and Blaine had painted it together, filled it with pictures of friends, family and the two of them - the demon’s fingers licked along the collection, memorizing each and every face.  
  
Blaine saw the snapshot of he and his father at a company Christmas party and tried to summon strength from it, a perfect evening in his hijacked memory, but it was pushed too quickly back when his body turned around again.  
  
The mounted magnetic bar that held Aaron’s cooking knives drew the attention of his captor. He reached for them one at a time, tested their edges, picked one up to measure its heft. “A little barbaric,” he said, but still held on, fingers tightly grasping.  
  
With no logic left to comfort his fear, Blaine assumed the knife was meant for him - that he’d be cut out, his skin peeled open and his heart and soul extracted for replacement. Ideas for rescue clamored together and degraded from clear possibilities to a series of chaotic pixels.  
  
The only available option was to watch himself die from a box.  
  
His second self maneuvered them out of the kitchen, through the dining room, and toward the stairs, just like he had the first time they walked together. The voice of its inner dialogue sent shrieks of alarm through Blaine in his reduction; he could hear it plotting, seeking something out. He could smell its excitement, taste malignant urges on his numb, useless tongue.  
  
Rounding the corner at the top of the stairs, Blaine heard the keys of his father’s computer - a moment recreated by the demon’s design. He’d be sending out an email. Every morning before work he made his way through an overstuffed professional inbox. Every evening before bed, he caught up on personal correspondence. This was routine.  
  
Blaine quickly understood, horrified and sick, the trajectory of his second self’s purpose; where they were going and why. At the doorway to his office, Blaine tried to mimic the plea that had dropped him out of this possessed state of being the night before, but he didn’t drop this time, he couldn’t stop its progress, he couldn’t stop the sick, sick, sick feeling.  
  
Dragged closer by footsteps he could not impede, Blaine screamed in himself, filled up the limited space he still occupied with threats and commands, aimed his desperation at Aaron where he sat unaware.  
  
Quietly they invaded, the unlikely pair, until Blaine could look down at Aaron’s sturdy shoulders and dark blue button-up, until he could see the hereditary mess of hair pinned down with product. His hands were in motion, swatting away the struggle he mounted as though it were nothing but vapor.  
  
 _‘Move!’_ he told him, begged him, mind swelling at the cacophony he created in himself, _‘Dad, dad! Move! Turn around, look at me! Look at me, dad, please!’_  
  
Nothing, _nothing,_ Blaine threw all of the force he could muster at warning his father of their approach, and for _nothing_.  
  
There was a technique to the cut - Blaine’s hand slipped the blade between two of Aaron’s ribs, then pulled back; a wide, clean slice. _Dad!_ The lung inside shredded open, filled with blood. Aaron sputtered and murmured, noises locked at the back of his throat and coming from nowhere a sentence could be found. _No, dad!_ In a spasm of blind, attempted self-preservation, Aaron toppled sideways and nearly fell from the chair.  
  
The Blaine outside caught him, wrapped both arms around him from behind, whispered comfort into his ear and lowered him slowly to the carpet collecting red in its fibers.  
  
“Shh, shh. It’s alright. It’ll be alright. Almost over.”  
  
The Blaine inside was stained and screaming, he felt the wetness of life cooling on his hands and wanted to vomit, wanted to run.  
  
“There you go,” the demon said, “All the way down, all the way.”  
  
When Aaron was nearly immobile, twitching uselessly on the floor, Blaine was straightened up by his second self and wiped clean on the shirt he’d gone to bed in.  
  
Again, he aimed a bit of dialogue inward, taunting Blaine’s inability to reply. “Sorry about that. I think he would’ve noticed the difference.”  
  
He wouldn’t have replied either way. He’d been overwhelmed and washed out. Aaron’s death dominated everything else, and he could only grieve in suspension where no one was listening.  
  
In the hours that followed, Blaine found that information could be pulled from him like organs at autopsy. The demon pried him open, probed into his hidden corridors and removed whatever pieces he needed - directions to school, the understanding of his routines and the names of his friends.  
  
Kurt’s name.  
  
Because his intentions were spoken in a foreign tongue, Blaine had no way of knowing that his own torture was not the imposter’s primary target. When he saw Kurt through the claustrophobic tunnel of his vision, he was thrown back into anxiety and dread, shaken loose from grieving and desperate to regain control. He was certain he’d have to watch him die like Aaron died.  
  
He exhausted the same hopeless attempts at school that he had at home, beating against the thing that trapped him and trying to shout through his skin for Kurt to get away. Kurt heard nothing but whatever the Blaine outside was saying to him.  
  
What he was saying sounded sweet. It sounded like him, like Blaine. He held Kurt’s hand at lunch, he kissed the ridge of his knuckles, he told him he looked ‘even better than usual.’ Blaine’s shameless, open-hearted attempts at romance were replicated to within an inch of perfection that first day, his first day at McKinley as a host for something sinister.  
  
As classes drew to a close, the Blaine inside was allowed a moment of comfort. He accepted that Kurt wasn’t being hurt - not yet, not today.  
  
Behind the wheel on his way home, he heard himself say to the otherwise empty car, “Patience.”  
  
Blaine didn’t know what it meant to the demon, what it meant to his second self, but he knew what it meant to him. It was, in the unlikeliest of ways, an inspiration.  
  
Being subjected to the sight of his traitorous arms disposing of Aaron’s body that evening  was the last test of his resolve against insanity, against submitting to the parasite and losing himself.  
  
 _Patience,_ he thought, over and over, _patience, patience, patience._  
  
When Aaron didn’t go to work and didn’t answer his phone, police would eventually be sent to the house. They’d find ‘Blaine’ alone, in a house with a soiled office rug and an absent father. A lifetime in prison was better than this, than looking at the faces of the people he loved as life left them. He’d be arrested for Aaron’s death and the sinister engine powering him would be locked up, too. He had to watch it kill - soon enough he’d watch it rot. They would rot together.  
  
He just needed to be patient.


	5. Chapter 5

Blaine's imposter doesn't approach Kurt the next day. He lets him come to school, fight his way through classes, eat with his friends and leave - all without antagonism or threat. He doesn't text him while he's driving home. He doesn't call him when he gets there.  
  
He’s thankful for the respite. While Finn is occupied with homework, Kurt sits in a tight, awkward ball on the end of the sofa, combing through the internet with frantic fingers and trying to conceal his search results.  
  
He doesn't know precisely what he's looking for, what information is relevant, or whose testimonies he can trust. He's found amateurish occult pages and essays on ancient folklore and bland accounts of doppelgangers clearly adapted from a movie the writer took too seriously, but nothing concrete, and simply looking is enough to make him question what he's seen and heard.  
  
In a minimized window, he’s pulled up information on various paranoia disorders and cranial emergencies that manifest in hallucination, but he doesn't have the nerve to scan them yet. He doesn’t want to find himself in the symptoms.  
  
Burt shuffling in from work startles him from study.  
  
"Hey, guys."  
  
"Hey, dad."  
  
He works off his boots by the door and hooks his keys, just like Kurt does - it's taken him years to teach his father to put things in designated areas. He smiles at the effort, happy to see him, happy his tantrum the day before hadn't soured the air between them, happy to be near someone strong, solid and reliable.  
  
Burt aims a finger at him from across the room, blindly falling into his recliner. “I never thought I’d say it, but I’m really getting to like that kid you’re dating. He’s a decent guy.”  
  
Anxiety prickles along his scalp. "Blaine?"  
  
"Yeah. You know he came down to the shop today after school?"  
  
Kurt's heartbeat is erratic. He exerts so much effort trying not to shake that his muscles cramp with the strain.  
  
He went to see his father. He was alone with him. Burt didn't know not to trust him, he didn’t know he wasn’t safe.  
  
"He was with you - he went to see you."  
  
"Sure did, stayed for about an hour and helped me get this pain in the ass golf instructor out of my hair. Kept wandering out onto the floor to ask if we were finished yet."  
  
Color and calm leave him, leave his face. His neck is tight, his knuckles aching over the edges of his laptop.  
  
Kurt keeps a variety of acquaintances. He nurtures some and tolerates others. He has a family beyond that, a woman who makes his dad smile, a brother to shoulder the burden of chores. Kurt loves - he just doesn’t love much, doesn’t love often, doesn’t love too deeply or with anything resembling abandon.  
  
There are precisely two people he trusts enough to cross that invisible line in the sand. One is already gone, swallowed up somewhere and impossibly replicated; he has to look at the grotesque interpretation every day.  
  
He can’t lose the other. He can’t lose Burt.  
  
Masochism moves in him long enough to picture his father propelled by the same mechanical viciousness as Blaine is, now, to picture Burt aggressive and manipulative and obscene. He fights not to show his reaction.  
  
"You can't let him work with you again, dad. If he comes back, send him home."  
  
Burt asks "Why" and "Are you okay?" in entirely separate tones of voice, as though the two have nothing to do with each other.  
  
Finn lifts his head from geometry to invade on the conversation. "Nope, he's been pouting for weeks because he and Blaine are in this rut-funk-thing. They don’t even really talk anymore."  
  
"That a fact? You didn't tell me anything about that."  
  
For once, Finn's utter lack of tact is relieving. Kurt pounces on the potential for excuse, reigning himself in, desperate to be convincing.  
  
"I haven't wanted to talk. He probably thinks that by spending time with you, he can get through to me. So if you could just -- not encourage him, I would really appreciate it."  
  
He can see the ineffectiveness plainly. Burt opens his mouth to argue, to insist that Kurt explain himself, but in the end he offers nothing but a respectful, quiet nod - and Kurt isn’t fooled by his passivity. He knows that Burt will spend the next few days _hoping_ Blaine comes by again, so the two of them can ‘talk.’  
  
He doesn't give Blaine the chance to sniff him out the next day. He arrives at school determined to find him first.  
  
Waking to the same bleak reality he'd left the night before, he found himself stitching aggression into his clothes as he dressed. A night's sleep hadn't healed anything in him. Grotesque, threatening visions of Burt as a corpse greeted him at the end of every breath he took to try and steady his nerves.  
  
By the end of second period, Blaine still hasn't shown himself. Kurt can't focus, can't make the words on his assignments sit still, can't see his teachers through the fog of concern. What if he didn't come to school today? What if he was on his way to Burt already? He'd just be opening up shop. Business would be slow.  
  
He ignores the warning bell for his third subject and searches the hallways, prying through clusters of students and checking half-full classes on his way to the locker room. Blaine's second period was gym; Coach Beiste would know if he'd attended.  
  
In the months that followed her arrival at McKinley, Shannon Beiste had struck an unexpected but endlessly pleasant rapport with Kurt. She made him laugh - typically when he wasn’t in the mood to laugh. It made her valuable to him in ways that other people couldn’t be.  
  
Shortly after Kurt became aware of Blaine’s insidious metamorphosis, she’d caught him hiding from him and the cluster of Kurt’s friends he was walking with. He had ducked into the gymnasium and pressed himself between the half-retracted set of bleachers, and the color of his sleeve caught her eye.  
  
“Little old for hide and seek, aren’t you?”  
  
The approach startled him into screaming, and when she asked if something was wrong, it was the first time he realized that he couldn’t tell people what was happening to him, happening to his boyfriend.  
  
“I saw someone I didn’t want to see,” he told her. In the weeks that followed, he would get better at lying on the spot.  
  
Luckily, Shannon’s protectiveness over her students did not prevent her moments of simple-minded distraction; rather than focus on the absurdity of a child hiding in an empty gym from another child, she tugged him roughly into view, slapped his back with her great, heavy palm and said, “I know all about that. I ever tell you about our scarecrow? My pops thought he’d be more effective if we paid someone to fill the suit out . . .”  
  
As she talked, she lead him further from Blaine.  
  
They ate lunch together that day and twice after, picking at food between gymnasium chores. Because she was wide-set and sweet and stubborn, Kurt compared her to his father, and felt instantly safer when she was nearby. Being with her felt okay.  
  
Today he finds her closing locker doors left ajar by inattentive students on their way out of the room, and wishes against all his natural inclinations toward personal space that he could rest in her arms.  
  
“What’s up, French fry?”  
  
He doesn't have the patience with small talk or pet names he normally gives her. There's nothing in him but need, need to find Blaine, need to be sure he's in the building, because if he isn't, he could be with Burt. He might find him alone. He might find him off his guard.  
  
"Have you seen Blaine?" Even his name takes effort to say; Kurt feels like an accomplice in the ruse each time he pretends to believe that _thing_ is Blaine.  
  
She hesitates. Kurt can see it, can see apprehension skittering across her expression, tugging at muscles as it goes, making them twitch.  
  
"Yeah. Yeah, he just left a minute ago." Kurt has only enough time to expel his stress with a single relieved breath. Then, she offers more information, unprompted and sounding hesitant, sounded pointed. "He said he wasn't feeling well. I think he's leaving for the day."  
  
 _No._  
  
Kurt needs out of this conversation as quickly as possible. If Blaine is leaving, he's leaving to find Burt - Kurt doesn’t even consider an alternative. All of his nerves are lit up and active, every pore swollen with sweat.  
  
He manages a tight, "Thank you," hoping to retreat, but just before he can exit the room, Shannon touches his elbow with her fingertips.  
  
"Hey. Are you okay?"  
  
His wit is wasted by the pressure.  
  
"I'm fine, I just need to catch him before he leaves. I have something he needs."  
  
"You're sure?"  
  
It occurs to him like a head-on collision that she might be delaying him on purpose. He doubts his judgment more every day. If it happened to Blaine, it could happen to anyone. She might not be Shannon. She might be something else, some twisted, manipulative stand-in assisting her partner in hurting Kurt, hurting his father.  
  
He shakes his head as if the thought can be jarred loose, but it isn't, and he's nauseated by the suspicion. There are so few places he can go. Losing this one, losing Shannon, it hurts.  
  
A failed attempt to stamp out a response later, he simply leaves her dumbfounded and waiting for an answer, calling after his quick retreat.  
  
His feet thud and skid and skip over the tiled floor of the school's empty hallways, his own determined echo bouncing back at him from the walls. Just outside the entrance, Kurt spots him - a few yards ahead, tugging open his car door, climbing inside, preparing to go.  
  
Kurt drops what he's carrying one thing at a time - his bag, his books, the cumbersome burden of a jacket - and abandons them all to the parking lot gravel. He chants in his head at the same impossible speed as his pulse, " _no, no, no_ ," and " _dad_ ," the only words left in his vocabulary until he reaches Blaine's car, skids to a stop and screams as he pries at the door.  
  
"Get out, get out here!"  
  
Kurt jerks at the handle, reaches inside, gropes with sharp, furious fingers at any part of Blaine's body he can reach. He’s digging into clothes and skin, pulling at him until he's halfway compliant and standing up again, his shoulders aligned with the top of the car.  
  
Blaine's hands are up in a pretended plea for peace, but he's smiling with all of his teeth bared, his eyes are wide and predatory, he's laughing. He's laughing at Kurt; Blaine's face, Blaine's mouth, Blaine's voice are all laughing at him, they’re laughing because he’s upset, they’re laughing because they aren’t afraid.  
  
Kurt hits him, a solid, tight-fisted strike to the face, then hits him again. He's never hit anyone before, and even hysteria doesn't prevent his knuckles from aching after impact.  
  
He threatens loud and raw, heedless of the people inside who might hear and come to the creature’s defense, "You stay away from him!"  
  
Blaine dabs at his mouth with a sleeve. "I see you got my message."  
  
"Stay away from my dad!" He punctuates the order by gathering Blaine’s shirt in his hands and shoving his body backwards.  
  
"Or you'll do what?” The shock of Kurt’s aggression is passed; the demon presses back at him, pries his fingers loose and pushes him away. “What's my punishment for tearing his tongue out with my teeth, Kurt? What'll you do to me if I feed him his own heart while it's still beating?"  
  
"You won't," Kurt insists, powering through the imagery. "You won't get near him, I won't let you."  
  
“Boys and their fathers,” the demon tutted. “It’s a weakness. Your dog's got the same one. Save your bravado; it’s embarrassing. All I want is to talk to you, alone. Something you've made very difficult with your witless protection program. How we get around to it is up to you."  
  
"We're alone, what do you _want_?”  
  
"Don’t be stupid. This is a public school parking lot. We’re hardly alone.” His tone turns sick-sweet and infantilizing; he’s tired of saying these words. “Get in the car, Kurt. Last chance to play nice. Stop making me chase after you, or I'll eat your father alive. You knocking at me with those tiny little lady hands won't do either of you any good. You can't imagine the kind of agony I can put that man through if you make me.”  
  
Kurt stalls, halted by the same stiff dread that the order gave him last time, and the time before that, and the time before that. This relentless version of Blaine has wanted from the getgo to remove him from the school’s premises, and each attempt awakes a certainty in Kurt that it’s not a journey he’ll come back from.  
  
But he’s a clever kind of evil, because he’s dug up and stabbed at what matters more to Kurt than his own safety. He can hit him, he can fight with nails out and teeth bared until the thing that looks like Blaine is bent and bloody in front of him, but he’ll be the same sinister specter that can move Kurt’s whole body with only a gesture of his fingers. Kurt believes him when he says that he can make his father hurt.  
  
Quiet inspires the demon's impatience.  
  
"It's just a conversation, Kurt. Quite frankly, you're not the plot point you think you are. I pinky-promise your safety for today."  
  
“Fine,” he says, accepting defeat, submitting in body, but not in demeanor.  
  
He hides the stress that powers him when he doubles back to collect his things. He lifts his head pridefully when he’s closed into the car. And when he looks around, when he sees the same debris of personality that his Blaine, the old Blaine, dirtied the car with a month ago, still strewn around the cab, when he takes a breath and smells Blaine, when he’s faced with a long-gone reality and can’t protect himself against how much he wants him back, he absolutely refuses to let the demon see him care.  
  
The ache is off his face before Blaine can cross back to the driver’s side and they pull away together.


End file.
